Editorial: Voice Actors Deserve More Respect

[RoyalRubble]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com.

"Editorial: Voice Actors Deserve More Respect"​

Voice actor Andrew Danish in the recording booth

"Voice Actors have been a key part of animation and video games ever since animation and video games had the ability to have spoken dialogue. However, it seems like voice actors never get the respect they deserve. A strike between voice actors and the video game industry was recently resolved, where voice actors wanted protections from being replaced by AI. It took almost a year of striking for the video game industry to provide those protections. While this strike was going on, video games mostly didn’t use AI to replace American voice actors; they used voice actors from the UK, who were under a different contract than American voice actors.

This shows that you can’t just replace voice actors with AI and get the same results. Ultimately, I and many other fans of animation and video games want to hear performances from actual human beings, not a computer program pretending to be a human. A few years ago, voice actor Erica Lindbeck had her voice used on an AI cover song without her permission. When Lindbeck rightly complained about this theft, people who were fans of AI harassed her until she temporarily quit social media. This feels like an appalling lack of respect from people who got enjoyment out of Lindbeck’s performance over the years. Ultimately, Lindbeck is an actor, and she deserves to have her craft respected; people should not be using her voice without her permission."

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[PicardMan]

Replacing VAs with AI would be the worst thing ever considering how many jobs would be lost and I know how much of a struggle it can be to make ends meet. I'm still wondering why there is still a huge pay gap between Western animation voiceover and anime dub pay considering the rising popularity of anime. I'd think the popularity gap would close enough to make the pay gap less justified.

Also would like to note just how much different voice actor culture seems to be than "face actors" or "facies" as they are called. VAs seem to have a much closer connection to fans than facies. We would lose a great deal of a sense of community if AI replaced VAs. It's just a magical experience going to a con and hearing them do the voice. VAs tend to be more sociable and to fans compared to facies it seems. I'm still shocked that four animation VAs have hugged me (Tia Ballard, Monica Rial, Brittney Karbowski, Grey Delisle), and that's a magical experience getting hugged on by someone who voices your favorite cartoon characters. A lot of facies won't even shake hands with fans. Fans can't get the same experience if humans are replaced.